Vality Launches Data Re-Engineering Application
Vality Technology Inc. (Boston) has released a new version of its INTEGRITY software, which allows companies to analyze, match and reconcile data by finding hidden data patterns and relationships inside different operational systems and external sources.
Increasingly, companies worldwide are leveraging information technology systems and data to drive new business strategies. INTEGRITY identifies and repairs data problems, then organizes it into a single entity suitable for business applications, such as:
- Integrating transaction data into a data warehouse or information data storeConsolidating operations through the implementation of corporatewide Enterprise
- Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems
- Opening up operational systems through extranets and the Internet to incorporate outside constituencies-such as suppliers and customers
- Ensuring integration of data derived from multiple, diverse operational support systems in the event of a merger or acquisition
- Implementing Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) and enterprise information portal systems
- Improving inventory control management
- Improving customer support and identifying the most profitable customers
INTEGRITY achieves accuracy rates of data quality averaging 98 percent by using 24 match comparison algorithms, including fuzzy matching (time and distance proximity), phonetics, phrases in different word order and tolerance percentages.
"We offer a guaranteed quality level, fixed price and delivery time. When you put those three together, it's a very compelling product," says Stephen Brown, VP of product strategy at Vality. "Our niche with competitors has not been fought on productivity gains, but rather on the quality of data obtained, since the end result from INTEGRITY is completely auditable and legally defensible."
INTEGRITY does not directly write into or read from any proprietary data structures. "We've distinguished ourselves in the data engineering space by saying we're not in the data extraction and transform business," Brown adds.
INTEGRITY is very closely tied with DB2, however, and Vality estimates that about 60 percent of customers' data is more than likely coming from or going into DB2. Vality claims that a database that is subject to receiving information from disparate, multiple and potentially uncontrolled input is an environment where INTEGRITY can ensure the data going into that DB2 system is logically consistent.
"Load utilities supplied by database vendors can't guarantee field integrity or discern logical keys and associations," Brown notes. "We are a functional requirement on the front-end of DB2."
This is the first time INTEGRITY has been offered on the AS/400 platform. Other features include:
- Microsoft Windows-based Workbench interface for easier deployment and use of application
- Pre-packaged accelerators to automate common data engineering tasks; rules and tables for personal and commercial names and addresses
- NT, Unix and OS/390 support, in addition to AS/400
- Callable functionality for real-time parsing and matching of data entry or transactions to support EAI/e-commerce applications
INTEGRITY has been designed to complement IBM's Visual Warehouse data management products by enabling metadata to be passed back and forth and by delivering descriptions of the processes developed by INTEGRITY that need to be run on Visual Warehouse.
Data warehouses are quickly becoming mission-critical to corporations by storing ever-increasing amounts of data. "We surveyed 2,500 sites last year doing data warehousing. Almost 20 percent of them were 1TB or more," says Aaron Zornes, research director for application delivery strategy at META Group's (Stamford, Conn.) Silicon Valley Research Center. "Some even have 23 to 80TB of data. The problem with that much data to be sorted and compared is that the results are often 'dirty' or obfuscated.
"INTEGRITY reconstructs relationships between the data and the database; not just reverse engineers the data," he adds. "INTEGRITY allows companies to take several sources of data, blend it together and identify the financial standing of institutions or individuals and what their buying cycle is like. That's worth a lot of money to corporations. There are other tools that assess the quality of your data, but INTEGRITY fixes the quality of your data."
Pricing for INTEGRITY is based on licenses: Tier One (0-349), begins at $69,500; Tier Two (350-999), begins at $99,500; Tier Three (1000+), begins at $199,500.